rabbi MóNica gomery: Jewish Supremacy in our texts
Parashat Toldot
Nov 17, 2023
A few days after Simchat Torah, and the devastating events of October 7th, we turned back to the very beginning of the yearly Torah cycle, and Rabbi Ari Lev wrote the following in his Friday email:
“Torah is not one thing. And that is both its power and vulnerability. Like any sacred text, Torah can call for an end to suffering and violence. And Torah can be used to justify violence and extremism…
… It’s important to remember that we have agency in our spiritual lives. I cannot control the meaning others will make of Torah. But I can choose to make my own meaning of it, and make meaning in my own life.”
This week's parsha, Toldot, asks us to read with that spiritual agency Rabbi Ari Lev was describing, to read with a long view, and also to read as midrashic thinkers. And because it contains so much possibility for harm and for healing, I approached it this week with trepidation. There’s a lot at stake these days, and the Torah we read, interpret, learn, and teach has tremendous power in this time of conflicting narratives.
After struggling to conceive, Rivka becomes pregnant. Her pregnancy is a challenging one.
וַיִּתְרֹֽצְצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּה
“the children crushed one another within her womb” (Gen. 25:22).
Rivka is having twins, and that verb, יִּתְרֹֽצְצוּ, can mean that they tumbled around in her womb, they crushed against one another, or that they pressed into and oppressed each other.
Rashi jumps in, looking for an explanation as to why the twins are struggling. What caused their strife in the first place?
He quotes a midrash from Bireshit Raba:
“Our Rabbis reveal that the word יתרוצצו has the meaning of running, moving quickly. Meaning that whenever Rivka passed by the doors of Torah, Jacob moved convulsively within her, in his efforts to be born, but whenever she passed by the gate of a pagan temple, Esau moved convulsively within her, in his efforts to be born (Genesis Rabbah 63:6).”
Rivka carries two competing realities inside her. Two competing traditions. Children who want to be in the world in radically different ways.
She responds to it all with a question – Im ken, lama zeh anochi—“If this is so, why am I?”
There are so many ways we could understand her question–
“What’s happening to me?”
If it’s going to be like this, how can I withstand it?
If life includes this much pain and suffering, what is my purpose?
What am I birthing?
Rivka’s question would be enough to hold me in this moment, without an answer.
So many of us are asking–
What’s my role right now?
Amidst violence and destruction, what can I do?
Im ken, lama zeh anochi?
What am I birthing into the world?
God does provide Rivka with an answer, one that unsettles me as a reader.
“Two nations are in your womb,” God says,
“Two separate peoples shall issue from your body;
One people shall be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”
And so, this week, we can look into Torah and find the DNA of Jewish supremacy. Of supremacy at all. Of the belief that one people is destined to dominate another. It would be dishonest to claim that these beliefs don’t have origins in our sacred texts. They do.
I often wonder about the invisible agendas of the rabbis, and Rashi, and the meforshim, to ask midrashic questions about Torah. When were they simply curious and creatively intrigued by the gaps in our stories? When was it fun and even liberatory to exercise their poetic license? And when were they deeply troubled by the texts they’d inherited? What motivated them to exercise their spiritual agency, and add to Torah, expand it, even contradict it?
Against the backdrop of this Parshat Toldot, I’ve been holding another text close this week, from Mishna Sanhedrin (4:5).
לְפִיכָךְ נִבְרָא אָדָם יְחִידִי
The text asks:
Why was Adam, the first human being, created alone?
Why didn’t God begin with two humans, or more, a whole family, a village?
לְלַמֶּדְךָ שְׁלוֹם הַבְּרִיּוֹת
To teach us peace among people,
שֶׁלֹּא יֹאמַר אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ: אַבָּא גָדוֹל מֵאָבִיךָ
So that one person will not be able to say to another: My father is greater than your father, or my ancestor is superior to yours.
Centuries ago, the rabbis also inherited Torah, just as we have today. They inherited the book of Bireshit, a fraught model of scarce blessings, sibling rivalry, stolen birthrights and family strife. Of Cain and Abel, Yitzhak and Yishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah.
We have been wrestling in the womb for so long.
And in the belief that there are shivim panim laTorah, 70 faces to Torah, this midrash returns to our origins, to remind us that we all come from a common ancestor.
It reimagines the voice of the Holy One, not as the voice that told Rivka, one nation will serve the other, one nation will rule, but rather as a creative force that brought human life into existence through interconnection, through a shared humanity, through indisputable and unconditional equality.
Torah is not one thing. And that is both its power and vulnerability.
In the weeks to come, Jacob’s story will unfold. He will succeed in deceptively acquiring the birthright and blessing from his father, he will flee his brother’s wrath and his life will unfold against the shadow of this unresolved bitter conflict. Decades later, he will wrestle with the legacy of it and from this wrestling, his name, and ours, is given. Yisrael, one who wrestles with the Divine.
And then, Jacob and Esau will meet again. It will not be easy. But they will cry, and embrace, and begin on a path of reconciliation. They started crushed against one another, with no space, but they will come to an expanse of possibility.
I’m so grateful to learn Torah in this big hearted community of God-wrestlers. It is the Torah I need, week after week, and the Torah I believe our ancestors were asking us to bring to the table. I am grateful for a community brave enough to face the difficult parts of our tradition, and acknowledge that they too are part of us. Torah is messy and imperfect. And it can be healed by our questions.
May we take up our name, as wrestlers with tradition, develop the spiritual agency and audacity to imagine the text in new ways, to expand Torah as our ancestors did. This is not a univocal tradition, it is an ever unfolding prism of possibilities. And those possibilities include equity, justice, freedom, healing, teshuva.
May we each find our voice as an inheritor and interpreter, and together may we expand our minds, hearts, and tradition, making room for that which feels impossible today, but will one day bring repair.
Shabbat shalom.
Nov 17, 2023
A few days after Simchat Torah, and the devastating events of October 7th, we turned back to the very beginning of the yearly Torah cycle, and Rabbi Ari Lev wrote the following in his Friday email:
“Torah is not one thing. And that is both its power and vulnerability. Like any sacred text, Torah can call for an end to suffering and violence. And Torah can be used to justify violence and extremism…
… It’s important to remember that we have agency in our spiritual lives. I cannot control the meaning others will make of Torah. But I can choose to make my own meaning of it, and make meaning in my own life.”
This week's parsha, Toldot, asks us to read with that spiritual agency Rabbi Ari Lev was describing, to read with a long view, and also to read as midrashic thinkers. And because it contains so much possibility for harm and for healing, I approached it this week with trepidation. There’s a lot at stake these days, and the Torah we read, interpret, learn, and teach has tremendous power in this time of conflicting narratives.
After struggling to conceive, Rivka becomes pregnant. Her pregnancy is a challenging one.
וַיִּתְרֹֽצְצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּה
“the children crushed one another within her womb” (Gen. 25:22).
Rivka is having twins, and that verb, יִּתְרֹֽצְצוּ, can mean that they tumbled around in her womb, they crushed against one another, or that they pressed into and oppressed each other.
Rashi jumps in, looking for an explanation as to why the twins are struggling. What caused their strife in the first place?
He quotes a midrash from Bireshit Raba:
“Our Rabbis reveal that the word יתרוצצו has the meaning of running, moving quickly. Meaning that whenever Rivka passed by the doors of Torah, Jacob moved convulsively within her, in his efforts to be born, but whenever she passed by the gate of a pagan temple, Esau moved convulsively within her, in his efforts to be born (Genesis Rabbah 63:6).”
Rivka carries two competing realities inside her. Two competing traditions. Children who want to be in the world in radically different ways.
She responds to it all with a question – Im ken, lama zeh anochi—“If this is so, why am I?”
There are so many ways we could understand her question–
“What’s happening to me?”
If it’s going to be like this, how can I withstand it?
If life includes this much pain and suffering, what is my purpose?
What am I birthing?
Rivka’s question would be enough to hold me in this moment, without an answer.
So many of us are asking–
What’s my role right now?
Amidst violence and destruction, what can I do?
Im ken, lama zeh anochi?
What am I birthing into the world?
God does provide Rivka with an answer, one that unsettles me as a reader.
“Two nations are in your womb,” God says,
“Two separate peoples shall issue from your body;
One people shall be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”
And so, this week, we can look into Torah and find the DNA of Jewish supremacy. Of supremacy at all. Of the belief that one people is destined to dominate another. It would be dishonest to claim that these beliefs don’t have origins in our sacred texts. They do.
I often wonder about the invisible agendas of the rabbis, and Rashi, and the meforshim, to ask midrashic questions about Torah. When were they simply curious and creatively intrigued by the gaps in our stories? When was it fun and even liberatory to exercise their poetic license? And when were they deeply troubled by the texts they’d inherited? What motivated them to exercise their spiritual agency, and add to Torah, expand it, even contradict it?
Against the backdrop of this Parshat Toldot, I’ve been holding another text close this week, from Mishna Sanhedrin (4:5).
לְפִיכָךְ נִבְרָא אָדָם יְחִידִי
The text asks:
Why was Adam, the first human being, created alone?
Why didn’t God begin with two humans, or more, a whole family, a village?
לְלַמֶּדְךָ שְׁלוֹם הַבְּרִיּוֹת
To teach us peace among people,
שֶׁלֹּא יֹאמַר אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ: אַבָּא גָדוֹל מֵאָבִיךָ
So that one person will not be able to say to another: My father is greater than your father, or my ancestor is superior to yours.
Centuries ago, the rabbis also inherited Torah, just as we have today. They inherited the book of Bireshit, a fraught model of scarce blessings, sibling rivalry, stolen birthrights and family strife. Of Cain and Abel, Yitzhak and Yishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah.
We have been wrestling in the womb for so long.
And in the belief that there are shivim panim laTorah, 70 faces to Torah, this midrash returns to our origins, to remind us that we all come from a common ancestor.
It reimagines the voice of the Holy One, not as the voice that told Rivka, one nation will serve the other, one nation will rule, but rather as a creative force that brought human life into existence through interconnection, through a shared humanity, through indisputable and unconditional equality.
Torah is not one thing. And that is both its power and vulnerability.
In the weeks to come, Jacob’s story will unfold. He will succeed in deceptively acquiring the birthright and blessing from his father, he will flee his brother’s wrath and his life will unfold against the shadow of this unresolved bitter conflict. Decades later, he will wrestle with the legacy of it and from this wrestling, his name, and ours, is given. Yisrael, one who wrestles with the Divine.
And then, Jacob and Esau will meet again. It will not be easy. But they will cry, and embrace, and begin on a path of reconciliation. They started crushed against one another, with no space, but they will come to an expanse of possibility.
I’m so grateful to learn Torah in this big hearted community of God-wrestlers. It is the Torah I need, week after week, and the Torah I believe our ancestors were asking us to bring to the table. I am grateful for a community brave enough to face the difficult parts of our tradition, and acknowledge that they too are part of us. Torah is messy and imperfect. And it can be healed by our questions.
May we take up our name, as wrestlers with tradition, develop the spiritual agency and audacity to imagine the text in new ways, to expand Torah as our ancestors did. This is not a univocal tradition, it is an ever unfolding prism of possibilities. And those possibilities include equity, justice, freedom, healing, teshuva.
May we each find our voice as an inheritor and interpreter, and together may we expand our minds, hearts, and tradition, making room for that which feels impossible today, but will one day bring repair.
Shabbat shalom.